


humanity

by felinedetached



Series: sticks and stones [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: (including the fact that she wrote and posted this on her phone), Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Assisted Suicide, Multi, Suicide, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, and sburb chose a terrible reward, the underage tag is bc kanaya and rose look 13, this is deep and dark and terrible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 04:30:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13450584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/felinedetached/pseuds/felinedetached
Summary: It is human to live, and it is human to die. What does that make someone who never dies?





	humanity

The first indication that something was wrong came from Dave. In retrospect, it was all obvious. Inevitable. Time is the worst enemy of all life, because time, inevitably, leads to death. Karkat lived longer than expected, according to Kanaya. He passed of old age, in his sleep. Dave still looked thirteen.

  
John shut himself away not long after Dad Crocker’s death. He hadn’t been the most social before, but now? He was more of a god than any of them; stories told of him but not once a reported sighting. You think, perhaps, that it is losing his father a second time that triggered this, even if Dad Crocker isn’t really Dad Egbert.

  
Terezi went next, lost to the black hole that consumed all life left behind in Sburb. The Mayor followed her; old age the culprit once again.

  
“Time took them from me,” Dave would often say, “It’s pathetic, isn’t it? The one thing I control, and I can’t protect them from it.”

  
Next was Kanaya. She left a note by her body, pills and knives scattered nearby.

  
_I’ve seen too many of our children die,_ the note read. _I’m sorry, Rose. I can’t take it anymore._

  
You wonder, often, if things would have gone differently if you’d noticed her sorrow. Her declining mental health. If you’d _helped_.

  
“You couldn’t have done anything,” Dave tells you, his words slurring. He’s drunk - he’s always drunk, nowadays - and it’s almost an insult to your past drinking problem. Almost. He’s grieving, and he doesn’t know how to deal with it. You forgive him. You always will. But you don’t think you’ll ever agree with him on this.

  
Callie lives a long life - a cherub’s life, she tells you in her final days. She dies surrounded by her family, her loved ones. Roxy cries by her bedside, refusing to let her go. Jane exhausts herself and her abilities trying to bring Callie back, and when she realises it’s fruitless she pulls a chair up next to Roxy’s and just sits. You watch them as her body decomposes, and in the end it is Dirk who drags them away.

  
“Burn it,” he tells you, “burn her. And then clean the whole room.”

  
“Do we keep the ashes?” you ask, and hate that you have to do so. Dirk hesitates.

  
“Yes.”

  
Roxy starts drinking again. You watch her decline, and cannot help but think of your mother. Think of Kanaya.

  
Helping doesn’t work.

  
She is the next to go, her death deemed just by some higher power. Her body is as pretty as it always was, stuck at sixteen. You look down at your own body, thirteen years old and yet so much older than that, and you want to tear off your own skin.

  
Immortality was a terrible reward.

  
Jane vanishes, much like John does. The only confirmation you have of her continued existence is the way her company flourishes, grief driving it’s CEO to greater heights.

  
Jake goes next, his death heroic. A villain - because every world has villains, but not every world has villains with insane powers who challenge gods; and you thought your life was a comic book before - attempting to take over one of the newly founded major cities. Gas canisters littered liberally amongst the buildings, dual wielding pistols just like the god who came to challenge him. Whoever he was, he was the better shot.

  
Dirk decapitates Jake’s killer three months later. He arrives at your door, blood splattered on his face and clothes, and he cries. You hold him, and you cry with him, because it really isn’t fair.

  
The game could have given you anything as a reward, and it chose a curse.

  
When Jade comes, she does so much the same way as Dirk. Arriving on your doorstep, dripping wet, hair and ears plastered to her head.

  
“John’s dead,” she tells you, “just.”

  
“I should have been there,” she whispers brokenly as you hold her tight to your chest, “I could have saved him.”

  
She looks so young, and so haunted, and you know you look the same.

  
Later that week, Dave’s death is judged just.

  
“Alcohol poisoning,” the coroner states.  
“The game will judge our deaths just no matter what,” Jade realises, and you are too late to stop her as she pulls a rifle from her sylladex and eats a bullet.

  
“Assassination,” the chief of police tells you, when you come to ask him about Jane. “No signs of struggle. They strangled her to death and she didn’t fight back.”

  
“Assisted suicide,” Dirk breathes out next to you, and you rest a comforting hand on his shoulder. There is not much else you can do.

  
They call you the last of the gods. Trolls say you are moirails, and that that is why neither of you have succumbed. Humans say that the sibling bond you have is enough to overcome the heartbreak.

  
Both are wrong, and you meet Dirk’s eyes as he drives his own sword through his chest.

  
“I’m sorry,” he mouths, voice long gone, the blade through his lung.

  
“Don’t,” you say back, but he closes his eyes and stops breathing. Purple light floods the room.

  
You make a deal with the devil and they take you up on your offer. As grey drips down your skin like dye, you close your eyes and you let go.

  
They will take good care of you, and of your world. That is the deal after all.

  
The horrorterrors always did want to tangle with you.

**Author's Note:**

> id say im sorry, but im not, so you should scream at me on my tumblr @felinedetached


End file.
